Before Larry Nassar was sentenced to seven first degree criminal sexual conduct charges in Ingham County, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said a few words.
“Would you like to withdraw your plea?” Aquilina asked. Nassar responded with, “no your honor.”
“Because you are guilty aren’t you, are you guilty sir?” Aquilina said. “I have said my plea, exactly,” Nassar responded.
Aquilina said she's not publically releasing a six page letter Nassar wrote to the court but instead chose to read some of it before the sentencing.
“Those patients that are now speaking out were the same ones that praised, came back over and over, and referred family and friends to see me,” Nassar’s letter read. “The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad, they feel I broke their trust. Hell hath no fiery like a woman’s scorn.”
Nassar's letter used a word commonly said by his survivors, ‘manipulation.’ He said in the letter he wanted to plea no contest but the Michigan Attorney General’s (AG) office refused.
“I was so manipulated by the AG and now Aquilina,” Nassar’s letter said. “All I wanted was to minimize stress to everyone like I wrote earlier.”
Judge Aquilina was anything but pleasant to Nassar.
“You have not yet owned what you did, you still think that somehow you are right that you are a doctor that you are entitled that you don't have to listen and that you did treatment,” Aquilina told Nassar. “I wouldn't send my dogs to you, sir.”
As one chapter ends another begins for victims, now a powerful army of survivors.
“I just signed your death warrant,” Aquilina said after sentencing Nassar to 40-175 years behind bars for charges he faces in Ingham County.
Nassar is due back in court on January 31 to face charges in Eaton County.
